False Front

“Could you tell how many there were?” Bolan asked.

Latham shrugged. “Three. Maybe four. One guy has trouble breathing.”

“So I noticed,” the Executioner said. “What else did you pick up?”

“Somebody—I don’t think it was one of them—saw us drive into town yesterday.” Latham had been holding his machete over his head, preparing to swing it when the first sounds of the search party had reached their ears. Now, realizing he still had the big blade frozen in the air he lowered it to his side with a short chuckle.

“That all?”

“All I could make out. Keep in mind I was getting all this in bits and pieces and I’ve added a little conjecture of my own. The conversation had been going on a long time, and we just caught some part in the middle.”

The Executioner stared into the wall of green in front of him. Their situation was changing rapidly and his strategy would have to change with it. First, not only did they stand out among the natives of Mindanao, they were now being actively sought. Second, the Buick was burned. Even if the searchers had left no one to watch the car, and he and Latham could get to it without being seen, the vehicle was useless. It would be readily recognized regardless of where they went.

The Executioner took a deep breath and made a battlefield decision. They would hide out in the jungle the rest of the day, then stake out Mario Subing’s house one more night. He was now more determined than ever that if the terrorist leader didn’t show up, it would be time for another approach. But again, the only other avenue he could think of was to snatch Mario and take him some place for interrogation. He still didn’t like that idea one bit. It would no doubt involve at least some amount of pain on the old man’s part and even the thought of extricating information from an old man was repugnant to the Executioner.

“Well,” Latham whispered, cutting into the Executioner’s thought.

Bolan looked at him and saw the man staring at his forehead.

“As my mama used to say, ‘I can see the wheels a-turnin’ behind them frown wrinkles.’ When they quit, let me know what we’re going to do next, okay?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his can of chewing tobacco. This time, however, he reached in with his fingers, grabbed a pinch and stuck it under his lip.

The Executioner looked around him and saw that with a couple more machete chops he could open up a large enough area in which to lie down. His big blade flashed twice, then he dropped to his knees before rolling onto his side.

“I take it that means it’s nap time,” Latham said, cutting an area out for himself behind the Executioner. “Hope it’s a little longer this time.” He swung the machete forward side-armed, embedding it into the soft trunk of a tree and leaving it there.

Through half-closed eyelids, Bolan saw the man kneel, then lean forward on his stomach, bending his arm to use as a pillow on the side of his face. Moments later he was asleep.

AT FIRST Bolan thought he was dreaming. Then, as he suddenly snapped wide awake, he realized the voices were real. And at the same time, he realized they were the same voices he and Latham had heard from the jungle path earlier in the day.

He glanced at his watch. It had been less than two hours since they had dropped to the ground. He looked down at Latham, still sleeping peacefully. The Executioner considered wakening him, then just as quickly discarded the idea. Not only was there no sense in it, it could create a problem for what he was about to do.

Rising to a sitting position, Bolan pulled a small spiral notebook and pen from his pocket. Quickly he scribbled the words “Back soon. Stay here.” on the top page, then quietly tore it from the book. Working Latham’s machete out of the tree, he placed the note atop a bare patch of damp earth on the ground, then drove the tip of the machete through it to hold it in place.

A second later he disappeared into the trees toward the more traveled pathway.

Bolan moved quickly but quietly, his senses on full alert. He had seen the fatigue beginning to build in Charlie Latham even before their first nap the night before. But there was another reason he hadn’t brought the Texan along with him now. While Latham had proved to be smart, quick and deadly as a fighter, his jungle skills had been less than perfect. It was clear that what T.J. had said about the man was true—he had come to the Philippines for the martial arts training available, not the jungle. Latham had made far more noise than Bolan had liked during their earlier trip from the mosque to the stilt houses. It hadn’t mattered then; no one had been looking for them.

Now, it did matter. Someone was looking for them. And the Executioner wasn’t going to take the chance that a sudden cough or sneeze, or a footstep on a snapping dry branch might give them away.

The voices grew louder as Bolan neared the path. He slowed, staring at the ground before each step, taking shallow silent breaths, his ears cocked for any sign that he might have been heard. In addition to seeing and hearing, the Executioner took full advantage of his other senses, as well.

And most of all that sixth sense men such as he developed that some called instinct.

It took him close to five minutes to cover the fifty feet between where Latham slept and the jungle path. But when he reached the open area, he could still hear the voices as they made their way along the trail. Dropping down behind a cluster of tangled vegetation three feet from the path, the Executioner pulled the tiny microcassette recorder from his pants, plugged in the directional mike and extended it through the leaves as far as he dared.

The voices grew louder. But none of the words made sense to the Executioner. He lay perfectly still, the lactic acid building in his outstretched arm, pleading with his brain to let him lower it.

Through the thick undergrowth Bolan watched as four men—three armed with machetes, the third carrying a pinute bolo short sword—strolled toward him. Their ongoing conversation met his ears, including the wheezing words of a man with asthma. It was obvious the group was no longer making even a halfhearted attempt to keep their voices down, which they had made earlier in the day.

Bolan let a grin creep over his face. They had walked this pathway once and not come across the strangers. They were tired of the search now and assumed that if they hadn’t encountered anyone going toward the stilt houses, they wouldn’t encounter anyone on the way back, either.

All of which worked in the Executioner’s favor.

Bolan kept the mike pointed at the pathway as the men walked past. He continued to hold it in place until he could no longer hear their voices. Slowly he rose from his hiding spot, then stopped.

Should he follow the men on down the path back to the mosque? To get close enough on the path to record their words, he would have to take the chance of them spotting him. And if they did, they were likely to attack. The machetes and bolo had not been carried just for show.

No, the Executioner wouldn’t follow. He had no intention of getting into a position where he had to kill innocent men simply trying to protect their village from strangers they probably assumed were as bad as terrorists, if not terrorists themselves. Besides, the chance that he’d record some important bit of information he hadn’t already gotten on tape was small.

Bolan started back toward where he’d left Latham. He’d either gotten useful information or he hadn’t. The risk of trying for more outweighed the potential return.

He had taken only a few steps through the undergrowth when he stopped in his tracks. Another sound—foreign and loudly conspicuous to the jungle—suddenly boomed through the branches and vines. Moving faster now, the Executioner hurried back toward Latham. The men on the path were out of hearing range for the noises he made as he ran. But he wasn’t as sure about the long, booming, near ear-splitting cough-growls that broke the peace of the wilds.

The Executioner knew what the sounds were. And if the men searching for them heard it, they would recognize them, too.

Breaking out of the trees into the small clearing he and Latham had created a few hours earlier, Bolan saw the Texan on the ground. Latham had rolled from his stomach to his back in sleep, and now deafening snores thundered from his nose and mouth. Dropping to one knee next to the man, the Executioner grabbed his shoulder and shook him awake.

Latham returned to consciousness and his hand fell to the Browning in his belt.

Bolan held one finger to his lips and shook his head.

Latham caught on and relaxed.

The soldier let a good five minutes go by, listening, waiting to see if the search party had heard the Texan’s snoring. Finally satisfied that they had not, he rose and pulled Latham to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” the Texan whispered. He looked around, spotted the note stuck in the ground with the machete, then reached down and tore it from the blade.

“Old news,” the Executioner whispered. “I’m back.”

“Where’d you go?” Latham asked, yawning.

“The guys on the path came back. I went out to see if I could pick up more information.”

Coming fully awake now, Latham’s forehead wrinkled. “But you don’t speak the language.”

Bolan reached into his pocket and pulled out the recorder. “No,” he said, “but you do.”

“Aha,” Latham said, throwing his head back slightly. Then he frowned and said, “But what was the problem when you woke me up? How come we had to freeze for so long? They hear you or something?”

The Executioner suppressed a grin. “Or something,” he said.

“WELL, NOBODY ELSE ever accused me of snoring,” Latham said defensively as he and Bolan cut yet another new route through the jungle toward the stilt houses along the sea.

Bolan didn’t bother to answer. Night was falling quickly as it did in the jungle and the Executioner wanted to be within sight of the houses across the road from Mario Subing’s before their surroundings turned ink-black. As to Latham’s snoring, he had found it slightly amusing that this man—an accomplished fighter by anyone’s standard and a good enough woodsman if not the best—had grown immediately sensitive when he’d been told he not only snored but did so in a way that threatened to rip leaves off their vines.

The Executioner came to the edge of the jungle and peered through the foliage. Ahead, he could see the rear of one of the inland shanties across the road from the stilt houses. He held up a hand, both to halt Latham and to signal for silence, then sat among the thick green growth to wait on darkness.

Latham dropped to a squatting position next to him.

Bolan rested his hand on his outstretched leg and felt the tiny microcassette recorder inside his front pocket. Latham had listened to the recording as they’d waited for the hot afternoon to become evening. But they had gained precious little information they hadn’t already had. The Texan had, however, said that one thing was clear: it wasn’t just the fact that they’d been seen driving into town that had alerted the villagers to potential trouble. They’d been tipped off by someone ahead of time that two men might be coming to the village and that they were trouble.

That, in itself, was worth the chance the Executioner had taken with the recorder. It also jibed with his suspicion that the men they had fought on the road the day before hadn’t been random kidnappers. Someone knew he was on Mindanao, and that someone had alerted the Tigers.

Leaning back against the trunk of a tree, Bolan closed his eyes. He had also learned another valuable bit of intel by hiding near the path as the local men had passed—how they were armed. Although they would mistakenly view the Executioner as their enemy, he wasn’t. And he had no wish to kill or even injure them. But if he had to deal with them somehow, he had been relived to see that their primary weapons appeared to be blades rather than firearms.

Latham, having dropped to the ground across from him, now crossed his legs on the ground. “You think they know who we are?” he asked Bolan in a low voice. “The locals, I mean.”

“Probably not exactly who we are,” Bolan whispered. “But if they were tipped off, then somebody knows that somebody new—from America—is looking for the hostages.” He glanced overhead, squinting through the treetops into the quickly diminishing sunlight. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “At least I’m sure they don’t know exactly who I am.” He looked over at the other man now. “Exactly how well are you known on the island?”

Latham shrugged. “Around the gyms and martial-arts training halls folks know me as the ‘big American.’ I guess I kind of stand out.”

“You didn’t tell anybody about me coming, did you?”

“Of course not,” Latham said. He rubbed the beard stubble on his face again. “I’m still wondering what happened to the CIA guy, too. If word’s out on us, it may be on him, too. You suppose he’s dead?”

Bolan shrugged. There was no way to know.

Latham pulled out his tobacco can. “They’ll have men watching old Mario’s house tonight,” he said. “You can bet on it. We’re going to have to be even more careful than we were last night.”

“Or less careful.”

Latham had been about to open the tobacco can but now he stopped and looked up at the Executioner. “Huh?”

Bolan didn’t answer. For the past half hour, as they’d made their way back through the jungle toward the stilt houses, an idea had been forming in his head. It hadn’t quite yet crystallized, but already it was beginning to look as though it had a better chance of succeeding than simply setting up on Mario Subing’s house again.

With all the heat on them at the moment, Latham was right. The men of Rio Hondo would indeed be watching for them to make an appearance at the stilt houses. And while there had been no guarantee that Candido Subing would show up on any given night, there was practically a guarantee that he would not visit his uncle on this particular evening. The word was obviously out.

The Executioner finally looked at the Texan. “Let’s just see how things go.”

Latham still looked confused, but nodded as he packed his lower lip with the finely ground tobacco from the can.

The Executioner’s eyes skirted the heavily wooded area around them. Ten feet back into the jungle, he saw what he was looking for—a long branch, low to the ground, jutting out from the trunk of a tree. Rising slowly, he walked to the tree, raised his machete over his head and sliced the green limb away with one cut. With the branch on the ground now, he chopped both ends until he had a sturdy, relatively straight, three-foot stick roughly two inches in diameter.

Latham had watched silently, but as the Executioner turned he saw a light bulb flash on in the Texan’s head. Latham smiled as he, too, rose to his feet, found a suitable limb and made his own short club. Both men sat.

Thirty minutes later the sun had finally gone down and Bolan and Latham found themselves in a darkness known only in the jungle.

The Executioner laid out his new plan.

“EVEN IF WE GET to the house without getting killed, you really think the old man is going to talk?” Latham whispered through the darkness to the man sitting across from him on the jungle floor.

The big shadowy form shrugged. “All I know is that everyone on Mindanao seems to know we’re here. That means Candido Subing knows it, too, so he’s not going to show up at Uncle Mario’s again until we’re out of the picture.” He waited a second, then said, “If you think you have a better idea, I’m willing to listen to it.”

Latham shook his head, then realized the movement might not be seen in the darkness. “Nope,” he whispered. “Nothing better.” He stared at the shadowy silhouette across from him. Latham knew the darkness would hide his eyes as he scrutinized Cooper with a mixture of respect and wonder. Slowly he shook his head. As a Delta Force soldier he had seen his share of action, but he had never worked with anyone even close to being like Cooper. His old friend T. J. Hawkins had told him this guy was the best, but that might well prove to be the understatement of Latham’s lifetime.

The Texan pulled the straw hat from his head, then removed the bandanna he’d tied beneath it. The tobacco in his mouth had lost its flavor and he let it drop from his lip. Slowly and silently, he grasped the bandanna in both hands and wrung out the sweat. It was still damp when he retied it around his forehead and covered it once more with his hat.

Staring into the blackness, Latham knew they would be going soon, and he knew just as well that they would be attacked by armed villagers. Again, he looked at the man across from him, knowing Cooper couldn’t see his stare. But this time he wondered if Cooper might not still know he was being scrutinized; might not simply feel it with whatever it was that made him so different. The guy did seem to have “powers far beyond those of mortal man” to quote the intros to the old “Superman” reruns he and Hawk had watched on TV when they were kids.

Latham chuckled silently. No, this guy wasn’t Superman. He was flesh and blood, but he was something more, too. As a Texas schoolboy Latham had studied state history, and he was reminded now of a quotation that had stuck in his mind since those days. The words had been uttered enthusiastically by the English essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle speaking of James Bowie: “‘By Hercules! The man was greater than Caesar or Cromwell—well—nay, nearly equal to Odin or Thor. The Texans ought to build him an altar!’”

Latham’s gaze fell to the ground, but he continued to watch Cooper in his peripheral vision. Many altars in the form of statues and other memorials had been built for James Bowie in Texas, but Latham suspected that regardless of how deserving this man calling himself “Cooper” might be, he would never receive such honors. The wars the man fought were in the shadows. Clandestine. And Charlie Latham knew the man would never get credit for all he did for the world. At the same time he realized that, the Texan also realized that Cooper wouldn’t care. He had probably never even given personal glory a passing thought.

“You ready?” he heard his companion whisper.

In the darkness he could see the improvised baston—a Filipino fighting stick—dangling from the end of the man’s arm. Cooper’s machete hung from the other hand and, though he couldn’t see it in the darkness, Latham knew that it was held backward so that the blunt edge would be the striking side.

“I’m ready,” Latham said. With his own stick in his left hand, he flipped his machete around, too. But a last moment of doubt made him say, “You still serious about this no guns thing?”

Bolan nodded. “Keep the firepower ready, just in case. But it’s a last resort. Remember, these men think we’re here to hurt them and their families. They aren’t doing anything you or I wouldn’t do.”

“You realize we’d get better odds playing blackjack at the crookedest casino in Vegas, don’t you?” Latham asked.

The tall silhouette nodded again, but said nothing.

Which, to Charlie Latham, said it all. Yes, they’d probably die trying to do what they were about to try to do. But it was the right thing to do, so they’d do it.

Bolan stepped past Latham into the open area behind the inland houses, leading the Texan to the back of a crudely constructed storage building behind one of the houses. Both men dropped to a knee to reevaluate the situation. They knew the villagers were out there somewhere. Watching. Waiting. Knowing they would come. Who knew what lies they had been told about what the Americans wanted to do to them and their families? But it didn’t matter; the end result was the same. They erroneously viewed them as enemies and they would do their best to kill them both.

Scurrying out from behind the storage shed, the two Americans halted against the windowless back wall of the dilapidated dwelling directly across the roadway from Mario Subing’s home. Bolan peered around the corner, looked back and nodded.

Latham took a deep breath then let it out. Cooper hoped to cross the street and mount the steps of the stilt house, unseen if possible, then interrogate Subing’s uncle. With everyone looking for them already, Latham figured the chances of pulling that off were about a thousand to one. The fact was, had it been anyone else working with him, the Texan would have just flat refused to even try it.

Latham sighed. Of course the big man had a backup plan—for what it was worth. If they were spotted, they would do their best to snatch the old man and whisk him away somewhere before talking to him. To Latham, that, too, sounded like a terrific strategy for getting oneself killed and, again, he knew that if anyone whom he respected even half an ounce less than he did Matt Cooper had come up with the plan, he’d have told the idiot to go screw himself.

But Cooper had already proved he could pull off the “crazy” things in life. The worse the odds were against them, the better he seemed to perform. And now, Latham realized as they started around the side of the house, the big man would get a chance to prove himself again.

For they weren’t even halfway to the front of the house when three of the village men stepped out with swords.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bolan saw the glint of steel in the moonlight as the man rounded the corner from the front of the house. As the blade rose over the Rio Hondan’s head, he recognized the forked pommel and “crocodile” guard that characterized the Filipino sword known as the “kampilan.”

Forty-four inches of razor-edged death came flashing toward the Executioner’s head. He swung the machete across his body and steel met steel with a screech that sounded like a car wreck in the still night. The kampilan slid down the flat side of the machete and away from Bolan’s body. Using the tree-limb baston he had fashioned earlier, he smashed the attacker in the side of the head.

The villager slid to the ground, unconscious.

Two more Rio Hondans stood immediately behind the first and Bolan stepped to the side to allow Latham room to fight. The larger of the two attackers stood to the left and Bolan took him, noting that the man had dressed in traditional Filipino fighting gear for the night’s assault. A strip of red cloth—reminiscent of the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II—was tied around his forehead. Small but wiry arms extended from the vest he wore over his otherwise bare chest and in the man’s hands were a pair of matching, leaf-shaped barongs.

The two-handed swordsman was skilled with his weapons and now he came at the Executioner with a double attack. Both short swords snapped over his head, then descended at forty-five-degree angles from opposite directions toward the sides of Bolan’s neck.

The Executioner brought his machete up on one side, the baston on the other. The ping of steel against steel and the thud of steel against wood sounded simultaneously as he blocked both barongs. Taking a half step into the man in the vest, Bolan jammed the end of his stick between the eyes. By the time the villager hit the ground, his eyes had fluttered closed.

Glancing to his side, the Executioner saw that Latham had engaged his man and now blocked the wavy blade of a kris. Perhaps the most common of all the edged weapons of the Philippines, the twisting, snakelike double-edged blade could produce devastating wounds either cutting or thrusting. It was the latter tactic the villager chose now, and as Bolan moved on toward the front of the house he watched the Rio Hondan shove the serpentine weapon straight forward from his shoulder.

Latham stepped to the side and deftly guided the thrust past his body with his machete. His homemade baston came around in an arc to strike the villager on the temple.

The Executioner had just reached the front of the house when a Rio Hondan wearing what had originally been a white T-shirt stepped into his path from hiding. Countless washings in the brown waters of Mindanao streams had turned the shirt a dingy beige and the neck had been stretched out so far one side fell over his shoulder. The man carried a bolo knife in his right hand and he now brought it around in a sidearm assault.